''She did not whimper or complain'': Swedish-American Female Charity Cases in Minneapolis, 1910-1930

"She did not whimper or complain": SWEDISH-AMERICAN FEMALE CHARITY CASES
IN MINNEAPOLIS, 1910-1930
JOY K. LINTELMAN
The research for this essay was made possible with the assistance of David Klaassen, archivist of the Social Welfare History Archives at the University of Minnesota, and thanks to the Minneapolis Family and Children's Service, who allowed access to these confidential case records and granted permission to publish a portion of a case file. Names have been shortened or disguised throughout the essay to protect confidentiality. Thanks to Rick Chapman and Byron J. Nordstrom for their helpful suggestions.
J. K. L.
In October 1917 a caseworker for the Associated Charities (AC) interviewed 33-year-old Selma W., a Swedish immigrant woman living in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with her husband Otto (age 41) and daughter Ruth (age 11). A friend of the family had reported them as needing assistance—they were late paying rent and low on fuel and food. The visiting caseworker found Otto dying of tuberculosis. The W. family faced eviction; Otto was too ill to work and needed Selma's constant attention and care. As the caseworker investigated the condition and situation of the W. family, she made notations on her case records, including her first impressions of Selma: "Tears streamed down Mrs. W.'s face all during the interview, but she did not whimper or complain. She is a nice appearing woman, seemed very sensible and intelligent."1
Otto died in January 1918. For the next four years mother and daughter struggled with problems of economic need and poor health. But with the strength of will and intelligence initially observed by the caseworker, Selma pursued a variety of strategies for economic survival. In addition to wage work, she asked for periodic assistance from friends, relatives, the AC, and several other Minneapolis charitable agencies. Selma and Ruth successfully adjusted to the many changes in their lives. By 1922 Selma had obtained full-time employment and the family had adequate food, clothing, and housing. Their contact with the agency ended at this time.
Selma represents a segment of ethnic populations about which we have limited knowledge—Swedish urban working-class women. In spite of considerable attention lately in Swedish immigration history to urban settlement, relatively little is known about this group.2
Case records of the charity and welfare agencies that offered assistance to immigrant families provide one window into the lives of working-class immigrant women, who otherwise have produced exceedingly few written accounts to document their experiences. This study examines working-class female Swedish immigrants in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in the early decades of the twentieth century through the case records of twenty-seven Swedish-American women who received assistance from the AC.3
Coping with Economic Need
Swedish immigrant working-class women emerge from these records not merely as victims of hardship, but rather as capable, intelligent people who reacted to distress in a variety of creative ways. They fashioned survival strategies that were shaped by their ethnicity, gender, and class. They departed from a society whose attitudes toward women mirrored in many ways those of Victorian America. Swedish women's roles centered around the home—not around wage-earning—and it was considered inappropriate for married women to work outside of their domestic environments. Women's ability to follow cultural norms varied by class, though, as lower-class women in increasing numbers were employed outside the home during the late nineteenth century.4
While Swedish working-class women did this in increasing numbers, their employment usually reflected financial need rather than a desire to work outside the home. Working-class women were thus employed when economic stress was great. But they typically quit their jobs as soon as they felt that augmenting their income was not absolutely necessary.5 Cultural norms in the Old Country dictated that Swedish women should work outside the home only as a temporary economic strategy. Dual roles as wives and wage-earners were considered incompatible if not mutually exclusive.
In the case records it appears that many Swedish immigrant wives held cultural beliefs that a woman's proper place was in the home. These beliefs surfaced in cases where a husband was unable or unwilling to support his family, and the caseworker suggested that the wife seek temporary employment. Although charity agencies also supported notions of female domesticity, caseworkers often felt that a family's need for an income outweighed these domestic values. These Swedish clients, however, might confront such advice with disdain. Work outside the home, these clients demurred, prevented a woman from performing adequately in her roles of wife and mother. Kristin J. would not consider regular employment because she believed that "every woman ought to have a few days at home in which to keep up the house."6 Emma F. responded angrily to an agent's suggestion that she look for work while her husband was unemployed. She said:
if she were able to work she would not need to have anyone come and tell her about it. . . she had too much sewing to do for the children, [who were] in school, and would not want to let [her infant daughter] Kristina stay with anyone.7
Even though Swedish immigrant women like Emma accepted ethnic gender ideals of domesticity and the resulting constraints upon female wage-work, economic pressures apparently could—and did—force them to compromise these ideals. In the case of Emma F. just quoted, when economic pressure mounted, her ethnic role prescriptions were ignored. Two years after her angry response to a caseworker's suggestion that she seek employment outside the home, Emma F. obtained work in order to earn money for her family's food and rent.8
It is important to note, however, that the relationship between client and caseworker was often one of negotiation. Some clients could be quite clever and manipulative in dealing with their caseworkers. It is possible that some women used the Victorian ideals popular at the time to support their desire to stay at home and receive assistance.
Women who violated cultural norms by working outside the home could face disapproval. When a caseworker spoke to Karl B. about his habits of drinking and periodic desertion, he tried to pin some of the blame for his problems on his wife. "He does not like the company she keeps as all the women she associates with have had their husbands desert . . . and . . . she nags him and works out," wrote an agent. After this meeting the caseworker approached the wife and inquired about her social and occupational behavior. She defended her actions vehemently, pointing out that her husband's lack of responsibility had forced her to take action and find employ­ment
for herself, and that she enjoyed talking about her problems with other women who understood them.9 From the viewpoint of the caseworker in this instance, the client simply could not win. She was considered deviant if she did not follow gender role expectations, but she was simultaneously unable to follow them.
In spite of criticism by those around her, the Swedish immigrant woman who worked outside the home might enjoy the increased freedom and autonomy that working for wages could facilitate. When Emma F.'s husband Johan had difficulty finding work in the Twin Cities, he decided that the family should try farming. They moved to the vicinities of a small town in northern Minnesota, where he made a claim on a homestead. But Emma and her oldest daughter Alice (then 17) were unhappy there, calling the homestead "lonesome and forlorn." Soon Emma and Alice returned to Minneapolis where Emma worked as a waitress and Alice as a clerk. When an agent visited their home to check on Alice, who had recently been ill, Emma stated that she "didn't need help from anybody" and that she "didn't like to have people come and ask her questions as she was now her own boss as she had never been before." The agent reported that Emma "would not return to her husband unless she was sure she could be her own boss." One may assume that her husband was not willing to accept her terms—when she appeared at the AC four years later, she asked for help in filing for divorce.10
Most of the women in the sample were neither as lucky in locating employment to support themselves and their families nor as assertive as Emma F. In every case examined, women faced severe economic pressures. In 85% of the cases involving married women, the husband was unable or unwilling to provide an income adequate for the family's survival. A husband's non-support might signify any combination of the following: low wages, unemployment, alcoholism, illness, desertion, or death. In the remaining 15% of the cases the economic problems were related to the woman—who was either suffering from mental illness or was sick or dying and therefore unable to care for herself or her children.
When a husband was not willing to support his family, it was difficult for a wife to force him to do so. Legal action was a possibility, but many women did not consider it a viable alternative. Emma B.'s experience—not to be confused with Emma F. above—helps to explain why. Emma's husband Karl was a heavy drinker and rarely provided adequate support for his family. When Emma came to the AC for help, the family had already been evicted from two residences for nonpayment of rent. Emma told the agent that she had once attempted to collect her husband's wages directly from his employer, but her husband became so angry that she was afraid to do this a second time. When the agent suggested that she take legal action and report Karl to the authorities for non-support, she was reluctant to do so because she feared that he would only become more angry and violent upon his release. Besides, she had said, the authorities would not do much more than give her husband a short-term punishment. And punishment did not alleviate the family's economic need. When Karl eventually was arrested and sent to the county workhouse, Emma still had to find a way to support her family.11
Emma B.'s attempt to collect her husband's wages from his employer was not unusual. Her action illustrates a common role for many Swedish immigrant working-class women as family financial managers. Despite the fact that the cultural norms accorded the husband the role of primary wage-earner, a "good" husband was one who let his wife manage his earnings.12 For example, Alma M. was asked by an agent about her recently deceased husband. The agent noted that "she praised him very highly, and said that he had always been a good man and had always turned over his whole paycheck."13 Sista B. described her husband to an agent by stating that "he was a good husband and always turned his entire check over ... [to me]."14 Some caseworkers also expected Swedish immigrant women to fulfill the role of financial manager, noting when a woman failed to perform this role adequately: Krishna A. was described as a "poor manager" who "spends all of her husband's money foolishly."15
As family financial manager, the Swedish immigrant wife was constantly aware of financial problems and usually worked hard to resolve them. This often meant devising a way to increase the family income. As a first step, Swedish immigrant women might turn to relatives. The types of assistance that kin could provide varied considerably, but the cases examined here revealed many instances of money given or lent, food and clothing provided, or relatives caring for children while parents were ill or unemployed. When Adrena S. died leaving five children in the home, a grown daughter took in one of the children.16 When it was determined that Rosie F. should be placed in a mental hospital, her niece's family cared for her rather than allowing her to be institutionalized.17 In 1918, Selma B. was listed as "almost entirely dependent on relatives" for food and rent money.18
Friends and neighbors—the ethnic neighborhood—also assisted Swedish immigrant families, but these activities are harder to trace in the case records because no detailed listing was made for them in the sources as was done for kin. In several cases, however, neighbors reported to the AC that they and others had been assisting a family but could do so no longer because the family's need was too great. The Nils N. family borrowed over $400 from friends and neighbors before appearing at the agency for help." The housing patterns of
A d a p t e d from "Map of M i n n e a p o l i s , " H u d s o n P u b l i s h i n g C o . , 1 9 1 0.
( C o u r t e s y of Dallas R. L i n d g r e n , M i n n e s o t a H i s t o r i c a l S o c i e t y .)
welfare families also suggest the importance of neighborhoods in providing a network of support. Economic uncertainty and evictions forced welfare families to move frequently, but these moves tended to take place within a small section of the city. Minneapolis's Ward 9 was an area containing a large proportion of Swedes; the ward included over 2,400 first-generation Swedes in 1930.20 The moving pattern of one of the cases in the study is illustrated in Figure 1. Between 1911 and 1917, this family moved five times but always remained inside a heavily Swedish neighborhood .21 To move out of the ethnic enclave would entail locating and establishing new networks of help.
Ethnic and religious organizations represented another coping strategy available to Swedish immigrant women in times of economic need. In 77% of the cases, immigrant families had or were receiving assistance from a religious or ethnic organization. The relief provided usually included groceries, small cash gifts, and new or used clothing. Figure 2 lists the agencies and organizations that provided relief in the cases examined.
ORGANIZATIONS AND AGENCIES PROVIDING ASSISTANCE
Ethnic/Religious
Augustana church
Augustana Mission
Bethlehem Methodist Church
Concordia Society
Elim Baptist Church
Emmanuel Church
Lutheran Church
Methodist Church
Riverside Chapel
Swedenborgian Church
Swedish Church
Swedish Hospital
Swedish Lutheran Church
Swedish Mission Friends Church
Westminster Church
Public
Associated Charities Board of Public Welfare
Dept. of Public Relief Humane Society Legal Aid
Public Employment Bureau Visiting Housekeeper Visiting Nurse
Other Private
Citizen's Alliance Hennepin Mission Home Pillsbury House Salvation Army Severson Clinic Steven's Avenue Home Sunshine Society Trade and Labor Assembly Union Relief Unity House Washburn House Wells Memorial
Figure 2. 11 It is evident from the case records that needy families often relied on public and private charitable agencies for relief. For many women in need, however, this assistance was not without cost. Clients frequently had to endure the moral judgments and behavioral demands of the various agencies in order to receive any help. The story of Johanna S. and Alfred O. is a case in point. Johanna and Alfred lived together for a number of years and had a child out of wedlock. In 1911 Johanna became dissatisfied with her living arrangements because Alfred began to drink heavily and date other women. After leaving Alfred she came to the AC, desiring assistance in removing her possessions from Alfred's home and child care, which would enable her to work outside the home in order to support herself and the child. Although a police escort was provided to help Johanna retrieve her belongings, the AC was reluctant to provide any additional help. The caseworker wanted to take Johanna's child away from her so that Johanna's "loose morals" could be reformed. The agency sought to instruct her in "proper" behav­ior.
22 Disapprobation and humiliation were the price this woman paid to obtain some assistance.
Although the strategies of seeking assistance from relatives, friends, churches, or professional agencies were frequently used, they were never more than temporary solutions to economic distress. None of these sources of relief were intended to provide long-term assistance. They were created to provide temporary assistance until other means of support could be devised. What were these other means?
Some women turned to taking in boarders as a long-term strategy.23 For immigrants whose cultural norms discouraged work outside the home for married women, this proved to be an attractive way to earn money. It provided extra income for the family while allowing the wife and mother to remain in the home. The women were already accustomed to cooking and cleaning for the members of their families, so the additional laundry or meals required by a roomer or boarder did not necessitate learning any new job skills. This strategy demanded, however, an increase in the amount of energy and time needed to accomplish these tasks, and it also frequently incurred those emotional and interpersonal difficulties that commonly arise when members are added to a household.24
For families with children living in small tenement apartments, taking in boarders was not feasible. In these cases women might be forced to seek employment outside the home. The case records indicate that working for wages was not viewed positively as a long-term economic strategy. Like their sisters in the Old Country, most of these Swedish women who worked outside their homes appeared to do so only when it was absolutely necessary. For example, a woman might hold a job only during the time her husband was unemployed or away from home. Anna C. did laundry in homes every day while her husband had a painting job in Winona, Minneso­ta.
25 Hilda E. worked in a hand laundry while her husband was employed on the west coast.26
The fact that many women worked only when their husbands were absent may be tied not only to the economic need felt with the wage-earner absent but also to disapproval of working wives. From a practical standpoint, wages for working women were so low that it was hard to support a family where the woman was the primary wage-earner. Job opportunities were usually limited to unskilled labor. Some women lacked English language skills, which further limited employment opportunities. Finally, employers often avoided hiring married women, viewing them as unreliable because the demands of their families and homes might interfere with work schedules. In the case of Nils N., whose wife was the primary wage-earner while he stayed home to take care of the household and children, her wages were inadequate to support the family and they frequently applied to the AC for assistance. In this instance, the caseworker spent time trying to convince the couple to reverse their roles.27
Lack of adequate child care also made working outside the home difficult. In 1909 the AC listed only three day nurseries in Minneapo­lis.
28 One solution to this problem was to have an older child stay home from school to take care of the younger siblings. Annie C. made her 14-year-old daughter stay home with her younger siblings (ages 3,4, and 7) while she herself held a job and her husband looked for employment. This strategy worked for Annie for a while, but she was eventually confronted by a truant officer who demanded that her daughter attend school.29
Sick children created even more problems for the working mother. Even if adequate child care had been arranged so that the mother could hold a job, a sick child had to remain at home and could rarely be left alone. This meant that a mother might have to quit her job to care for an ailing child. Paid vacations and sick leave were rare in the early twentieth century, and sick-child leave was non-existent. Employers seldom retained the positions of women who happened to be absent for more than a few days. Selma W., who had worked as a clerk for the four years since her husband died, had to quit her job to take care of her 16-year-old daughter Ruth when she became ill.30
Although young or sick children might handicap a mother seeking to ease financial difficulties through wage-work, older children could be a boon to a family's economy by providing additional income through full or part-time employment before leaving the home. Families in this study used this economic strategy, despite some uneasiness about the appropriateness of relying on the wages of children for their support. Marguerite L. complained to a caseworker that her family, which had been living solely on one son's wages, needed aid. She felt it was wrong for her son to be required to support the entire family. She thought that he should use some of his money to buy new shoes and clothing for himself, not just for food and rent.31 One of the women for whom Anna J. laundered told an agent that "Mrs. J. would at times go hungry so that [her son] Valdemar could take a girlfriend to a movie now and then."32 The family had been living on Valdemar's and his mother's earnings since Mr. J. had become too old to work.
Swedish immigrant working-class women's case records reveal the variety of strategies these women used to meet their families' economic needs. To summarize, options ranged from legal action, child labor, taking in boarders, and wage work to seeking assistance from relatives, friends, and charitable organizations. These women carefully chose their economic strategies and weighed the value and costs of different options before making decisions. A pattern and logic to their choices emerges if one examines the case records in aggregate terms and with respect to the life course stage of a woman and her family during a period of need. Economic distress affected Swedish immigrant women and their families differently depending on the age and circumstances of a given family.
Survival Strategies and the Family Life Course
This study suggests that economic problems were most likely to emerge at two points in the Swedish immigrant working-class woman's life: first when she had a number of young children—usu­ally
when she was in her thirties—and then much later in life when husband and wife were left to support themselves just when their earning power was beginning to decrease. The age structure of families at the time of their first contacts with the AC is revealing. In 89% of the cases (twenty-four of them), the women were age 30 or older when they first contacted an agent (see Figure 3). In the cases where children were present (89% of the total), 74% had children under the age of 13 when their cases began. And 92% of the cases with children had one or more child over age 11 when assistance from the agency was terminated.
AGE AT FIRST CONTACT WITH AC/FWA
AGE NUMBER
20-24 25-29 30-34 35-39 40-44 45-49 50-54 55-59 60-64
No age listed
Figure 3.
These statistics suggest that young children in a household made economic survival particularly difficult. In addition to requiring extra food and clothing—straining the family budget—they also made it more difficult for a mother to provide additional income for the family at a time when it was most needed. The mother usually had to remain in the home to care for the children, and for the poorest classes there was little extra living space available to take in boarders. A husband's inability to contribute income to the family economy could make financial problems especially severe. At this point they were most likely to resort to welfare agencies for assistance. When children reached an age at which they could find employment, they could supplement the family income. Families with working-age children who were living at home were less likely to need continued agency support. The presence of older children might also make it easier for a mother to hold a job, since they could sometimes provide child care for their younger siblings.33
As children moved out of the home, families could more easily take in boarders. Alma M., who first sought aid from the AC in 1921, did not take in boarders until 1927 when two of her children had married and only one remained in the home.34 But boarders often became more burdensome as women grew older and became less capable of strenuous physical labor such as lifting heavy laundry tubs. Forty-five-year old Anna M.'s husband died in 1905, leaving her with two children (ages 12 and 14). She supported her family by taking in eight boarders and collected a total of $41 per month. But by 1921, when she was 61, she was physically unable to care for so many boarders and asked the AC to help her find work in a restaurant or mending clothes.35
When a woman reached her fifties or sixties, another period of economic difficulty might ensue. Children were usually married and living outside the home by this time, while parents' abilities to earn a living decreased with age. Grown children might be able to help support their parents, but more often than not these children had families of their own, which they were struggling to support.36
While the primary purpose of this study has been to examine the lives of Swedish immigrant working-class women in Minneapolis, the findings also raise some questions and suggest the need for further research using welfare case records. How representative were Swedish immigrant women on relief of Swedish working-class women as a whole? At first glance the relief-seeking group might seem highly unrepresentative because the population studied included only persons who sought relief from agencies cooperating with the Associated Charities. Yet many working-class families were forced to seek aid from economic distress. Historian Michael Katz in his study of poverty in American history has noted: ".., dependence was a major problem in nineteenth- and twentieth-century America . . . periodic dependence was a predictable, structural feature of working-class life."37 For many Swedish working-class families, the line between self-sufficiency and dependence or relief-seeking was very fine. It did not take much to push a family into dependence on welfare institutions. The actions of the Swedish-American ethnic community support this idea as well. Swedish Americans established charitable institutions such as orphanages, "homes of mercy," women's lodging homes, sanitariums, and homes for the aged in most areas with significant Swedish-American populations. These
institutions would not have been created had there been no need for them.38
From the perspective of the historian of immigration, one must ask: What difference did ethnicity make? Did Swedish working-class immigrant women behave differently in fashioning survival strategies than German, Irish, or Italian women? Or do ethnic differences decrease as one moves downward on the socioeconomic scale? While some studies utilizing welfare case records suggest similarities between persons in need regardless of gender or ethnicity, only further investigations and comparisons of clients from different ethnic groups will furnish answers to these questions.39
Case records also reveal many of the social and cultural values of caregivers and charitable agencies. The agency examined here had emerged from the dominant native-born culture. Many ethnic groups established their own charitable agencies and have case records similar to those studied here. How do the records of the Scandina­vian-
based Minneapolis Lutheran Social Service or the Jewish Family and Children's Service compare with those of the AC?
Statistical analysis of the information included on case record face sheets could also reveal important information about working-class life. From a labor historian's perspective, for instance, lists of prior employers and wages provide details about the occupational choices and the labor market as well as wage levels. The role of the labor union in assisting welfare families can also be documented. Even in the small number of cases examined in this study, one husband was active in a union, which the AC contacted and asked to assist these people.40 Welfare case records are also an important way to investi­gate
married women's labor force participation, which has typically been difficult to document because of their periodic participation and the unskilled nature of their work. Researchers should be encour­aged
to utilize these potentially rich documents.
The image of Swedish immigrant working-class women emerging from the case records is not one of passive victims of society. These women worked hard to maintain their dignity, their homes, and their families. When there was not enough money to put food on their tables or shoes on their children's feet, when husbands were absent or unable to find employment, women constructed a variety of strategies to meet the needs of their families. Women made informed choices from a range of potential survival strategies within a framework shaped by the interplay of class, ethnicity, gender, and age. That most of these women "did not whimper or complain," despite their struggles with marginality, is testimony to their courage, intelligence, strength, and determination.
NOTES
'Case 4659 on Reel 133 of Associated Charities/Family Welfare Association Case Records, Social Welfare History Archives, Minneapolis, Minnesota [all case number references below are records located in this collection].
2On Swedes in urban areas, see Ulf Beijbom, The Swedes in Chicago: A Demographic and Social Study of the 1846-1880 Immigration (Uppsala, 1971); Dag Blanck and Harald Runblom, eds., Swedish Life in American Cities (Uppsala, 1991); Byron J. Nordstrom, "The Sixth Ward: A Minneapolis Swede Town in 1905" and Matti Kaups, "Swedish Immigrants in Duluth, 1856-1870" in Nils Hasselmo, ed., Perspectives on Swedish Immigration (Chicago and Duluth, 1978), 151-65,166-98; Odd S. Lovoll, ed., Scandina­vians
and Other Immigrants in Urban America: The Proceedings of a Research Conference, October 26-27,1984 (Northfield, Minnesota, 1985); Anita R. Olson, "Swedish Chicago: The Extension and Transformation of an Urban Immigrant Community, 1880-1920," Ph.D. dissertation (Northwestern University, June 1990); Sune Åkerman, "Stability and Change in the Migration of a Medium-Sized City: The Case of Worcester, Massachu­setts"
in Dirk Hoerder, ed., American Labor and Immigration History, 1877-1920s (Urbana, 1983); see also Philip J. Anderson and Dag Blanck, eds., Swedish-American Life in Chicago (Urbana, 1992) as well as publications emerging out of the Uppsala University project on "Swedes and other ethnic groups in urban America."
On Swedes in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, see Nordstrom, "The Sixth Ward;" as well as Byron J. Nordstrom, "Ethnicity and Community in the Sixth Ward of Minneapolis in 1910," in Lovoll, ed., Scandinavians and Other Immigrants in Urban America, 33-53. Other works dealing with Swedes in Minneapolis include Alfred Söderstrom, Minneapolis Minnen. Kulturhistorisk Axplockning från Qvarnstaden vid Mississippi (Minneapolis, 1899); Byron J. Nordstrom, ed., The Swedes in Minnesota (Minneapolis, 1976); Works Projects Administration, Writers Program, The Bohemian Flats (Saint Paul, 1986 [orig. pub. 1941]); Richard Wolniewicz, 'Northeast Minneapolis: Location and Movement in an Ethnic Community," Ph. D. dissertation (University of Minnesota, 1979); Lisa Knazan, "The Maple Hill Community, 1919-1940," summa paper (University of Minnesota, 1973), copy in Minnesota Historical Society; John G. Rice, "The Swedes," in J. D. Holmquist, ed., They Chose Minnesota: A Survey of the State's Ethnic Groups (Saint Paul, 1981), 248-76.
For important research on urban working-class Swedish women, see Byron J. Nordstrom, "Evelina Månsson and the Memoir of an Urban Labor Migrant," Swedish Pioneer Historical Quarterly, 31 (1980): 182-95, and Inga Holmberg, 'Taboos and Morals or Economy and Family Status?: Occupational Choice Among Immigrant Women in the U.S.," Blanck and Runblom, 25-43.
'Although case records have recently been used by scholars of women and social welfare, they have yet to be utilized by ethnic historians. See Linda Gordon, Heroes of Their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence, Boston 1880-1960 (New York, 1988); Michael B. Katz, Poverty and Policy in American History (New York, 1983); and Beverly Stadum, Poor Women and Their Families: Hard Working Charity Cases, 1900-1930 (New York, 1992).
'Murray Gendell, Swedish Working Wives (Totowa, New Jersey, 1963), 45-60. On
Swedish women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, see also Gunnar
Qvist, "Policy Towards Women and the Women's Struggle in Sweden," Scandinavian
Journal of History, 5 (1980): 51-74; Gunnar Qvist, Konsten att blifva en god flicka.
Kvinnohistoriska uppsatser (Stockholm, 1978) and Kerstin Moberg, Från tjänstehjon till
hembiträde. En kvinnlig låglönegrupp i den fackliga kampen 1903-1946 (Uppsala, 1978).
5Gendell, 58.
6Case 3926 on Reel 129.
7Case 4655 on Reel 133.
"Ibid.
'Case 4372 on Reel 131. ,0Case 4655 on Reel 133. "Case 4372 on Reel 131.
1JOn immigrant women as financial managers, see John Bodnar, The Transplanted: A
History of Immigrants in Urban America (Bloomington, 1985), 82.
"Case 3981 on Reel 129.
"Case 4197 on Reel 130.
"Case 4495 on Reel 131.
léCase 4513 on Reel 132.
,7Case 4542 on Reel 132.
,8Case 4659 on Reel 133.
"Case 4138 on Reel 129.
^Calvin F. Schmid, Social Saga of Two Cities (Minneapolis, 1937), Chart 76.
aCase 4495 on Reel 131. The same phenomena have been noted among London's poor.
See Gareth Stedman Jones, Outcast London (Oxford, 1971), 81-88.
22Case 4187 on Reel 130.
23John Modell and Tamara K. Hareven, "Urbanization and the Malleable Household: An Examination of Boarding and Lodging in American Families," Journal of Marriage and the Family, (1973): 472.
24I found boarding used in the following case records: Case 3926 on Reel 129, Case 3981
on Reel 129, Case 4372 on Reel 131, Case 4493 on Reel 131, and Case 4750 on Reel 133.
aCase 4463 on Reel 131.
26Case 4467 on Reel 131.
''Case 4138 on Reel 129.
^Associated Charities, 1909, p. 45.
29Case 4469 on Reel 131.
'"Case 4659 on Reel 133.
31Case 4024 on Reel 129.
32Case 4551 on Reel 132.
"My findings on boarders differ from several other studies that indicate use of the boarder strategy in households with younger children. See James R. Barrett, "Work and Community in the Jungle: Chicago's Packing House Workers, 1894-1922," Ph.D. dissertation (University of Pittsburgh, 1981), 173; Donna Gabaccia, "Sicilians in Space: Environmental Change and Family Geography," journal of Social History, (1982): 53-66; and Oliver Zunz, The Changing Face of Inequality: Urbanization, Industrial Development, and Immigrants in Detroit, 1880-1920 (Chicago, 1982), 72-73. This difference may be due to the fact that the families in this study were at the very bottom of the economic ladder and their housing was too dismal to accommodate boarders. In addition, the AC discouraged this activity, viewing it as a negative influence on family life. "Case 3981 on Reel 129.
^See Case 4024 on Reel 129, Case 4542 on Reel 132, Case 4551 on Reel 132, and Case 4430 on Reel 131. 37Katz, 9.
''See, e.g., Rev. Erik Sjostrand, "Civic and Charitable Activities Among the Swedish-Americans," in The Swedish Element in America, Vol. 2, Axel W. Hulten, assoc. ed. (Chicago, 1934), 252-312. The focus of this documentation has been on factors such as organization, financing and management, rather than on the clients, and this material reveals little about the actual circumstances of working-class Swedish immigrant life. 3,On Jewish welfare recipients, see Richard M. Chapman, "To Do These Mitzvahs: Jewish Philanthropy and Social Service in Minneapolis, 1900-1950," Ph.D. Dissertation (University of Minnesota, 1993). On Associated Charities welfare recipients from a variety of ethnic and racial groups, see Beverly Stadum.
"Case 4024 on Reel 129—"case referred to Trade and Labor Assembly because John was a union man."
APPENDIX INFORMATION ON SOURCE MATERIAL Welfare Case Records
Because welfare case records represent a relatively new way in which to study social history, and particularly immigration history, it is useful to discuss how and why these records were created. The Associated Charities of Minneapolis was formed in 1884 as part of a nationwide charity organization movement. The AC later changed its name to the Family Welfare Association. The organization was designed to create "order and coordination" among the many relief agencies providing assistance to the needy in Minneapolis. These included private religious and secular agencies as well as public ones. By providing relief in a systematic and coordinated manner, charity-givers hoped that duplication of services and "cheating" by the poor would be avoided. These goals were to be met through the investiga­tion
of clients by volunteers called "friendly visitors."
Such visitors interviewed the candidates for relief and made recommendations regarding the "worthiness" of the applicant and the type of relief they thought would be most beneficial to the recipient. The Minneapolis AC eventually developed a staff of professional caseworkers who visited clients and created detailed case files for each family or individual who came—or was reported—to the AC as "in need." This transition from friendly visitors to professional caseworkers occurred in the first decade of the twentieth century. By 1907 a professional staff trained in social casework theory and methods was fully in place.1
The Associated Charities emphasized meticulous and elaborate investigation of all who applied for assistance. In a history written on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the agency in 1909 a worker wrote "it was realized that to do good, it was not enough to hand out money and goods to him who asked but that the 'why' of asking must be known."2 A 1927 publication of the Family Welfare Associa­tion
(FWA—this change of name having occurred in 1922) listed the type of information an agent's investigation might include: "Social case work . . . looks into employment records, domestic relations, health conditions, creditors' schedules, children's school records, church connections, recreational opportunities, and so on."3
Each case record file began with a number of face sheets (see figures 4 and 5), listing the following data: names of applicants for aid and family members, dates of birth and/or death, present and previous addresses (often including the number of rooms rented or owned and the amount of rent paid or dollar value of the residence), employment experience of all family members, wages, birthplaces of family members and grandparents, and dates of immigration to the United States. Other pages listed information such as length of time as a resident of Minneapolis, relatives living in the United States, and agencies or individuals who had already assisted the client at the time the AC began supervision of the case.
Following these fact sheets were detailed descriptions of each contact made by the AC agents with the families and individuals listed on the face sheets (see Figure 6). The descriptions written by caseworkers are rich in detail about certain aspects of the ways of life of the working class. They also contain, however, varying degrees of bias. Caseworkers were usually white and native-born. Translators were not always available to them, so their communication with their clients could be difficult at times. A caseworker might mistake lack of language skills for stupidity. For example, the person reporting on Swedish immigrant woman Sista B. said that she spoke "very little English" and then stated a concern that she might be "sub-normal."4 Caseworkers often judged their clients on a basis of middle-class standards of appearance and behavior. It is reasonable to assume, moreover, that women seeking assistance from the AC were not always completely open and honest with caseworkers who asked intimate details about their families. Yet in spite of the potential for caseworker bias or other errors, these records represent an important historical source for our understanding of working-class immigrant life. As Linda Gordon has pointed out in her work using case records: "Their status as historical documents does not make them infallible; their truth must be gathered from among the varied and often conflicting stories they contain, and from the complex relation­ships
they express . . ."5
The Study Sample
The record collection of the AC/FWA is located at the Social Welfare History Archives at the University of Minnesota—Minneapo­lis,
and includes nearly four hundred reels of microfilmed case records. They have been filmed more or less in chronological order, and for this analysis I chose cases beginning around 1910. By that year the organization had a professional staff and the recording methods of the different caseworkers were more likely to be consistent with one another than in earlier years.
I examined five reels of microfilm, which contained a total of 363 relief cases. Twenty-seven of them met the ethnic and gender criteria I had set for the study; cases had to involve first-generation Swedish immigrant women, single or married.
The case length—measured by first to last agency contact—ranged from one to twenty-two years, with an average duration of 9.7 years. In the course of the agents' visits, however, clients frequently discussed a variety of past experiences, often ranging as far back as their childhoods in Sweden.6 A client's record that showed contact beginning with the AC/FWA in 1911 could contain information about a woman's immigration and occupational strategies in the 1890s.7 The cases I examined included information spanning the decades from 1880 to 1930, with the most details for the 1910s and 1920s.
NOTES
'On the Minneapolis Associated Charities, see David Klaassen, "One Hundred Years of Service to Families and Children," unpublished manuscript, Social Welfare History Archives, University of Minnesota. On the national organization (Charity Organization Societies—COS) movement, see Frank Dekker Watson, The Charity Organization Movement in the United States: A Study in American Philanthropy (New York, 1922). associated Charities, A Quarter Century of Work Among the Poor, 1884-1909 (Minneapo­lis,
1909), 16.
'Family Welfare Association, The Family Welfare Association in Action, 1917-1926 (Minneapolis, 1927), 18. 4Case 4197 on Reel 130. 5Gordon, 19.
6See, e.g., Case 4024 on Reel 129 ("Mr. and Mrs. L. were both born in the southern part of Sweden. They had known each other since they were youngsters. They had both gone to school until 15 years as had been required by Swedish law. They had both been confirmed. They said that one couldn't amount to anything in Sweden unless they had gone to school and been confirmed.").
7See, e.g., Case 4372 on Reel 131 ("Wife said that she had known husband in the old country ... he had come to this country early in 1892 and she had come at midsummer at his request. She had worked at housework for five years and he had worked in different factories the same length of time before they were married."). F i g u r e 4.
24
F i g u r e 5.
F i g u r e 6.

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"She did not whimper or complain": SWEDISH-AMERICAN FEMALE CHARITY CASES
IN MINNEAPOLIS, 1910-1930
JOY K. LINTELMAN
The research for this essay was made possible with the assistance of David Klaassen, archivist of the Social Welfare History Archives at the University of Minnesota, and thanks to the Minneapolis Family and Children's Service, who allowed access to these confidential case records and granted permission to publish a portion of a case file. Names have been shortened or disguised throughout the essay to protect confidentiality. Thanks to Rick Chapman and Byron J. Nordstrom for their helpful suggestions.
J. K. L.
In October 1917 a caseworker for the Associated Charities (AC) interviewed 33-year-old Selma W., a Swedish immigrant woman living in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with her husband Otto (age 41) and daughter Ruth (age 11). A friend of the family had reported them as needing assistance—they were late paying rent and low on fuel and food. The visiting caseworker found Otto dying of tuberculosis. The W. family faced eviction; Otto was too ill to work and needed Selma's constant attention and care. As the caseworker investigated the condition and situation of the W. family, she made notations on her case records, including her first impressions of Selma: "Tears streamed down Mrs. W.'s face all during the interview, but she did not whimper or complain. She is a nice appearing woman, seemed very sensible and intelligent."1
Otto died in January 1918. For the next four years mother and daughter struggled with problems of economic need and poor health. But with the strength of will and intelligence initially observed by the caseworker, Selma pursued a variety of strategies for economic survival. In addition to wage work, she asked for periodic assistance from friends, relatives, the AC, and several other Minneapolis charitable agencies. Selma and Ruth successfully adjusted to the many changes in their lives. By 1922 Selma had obtained full-time employment and the family had adequate food, clothing, and housing. Their contact with the agency ended at this time.
Selma represents a segment of ethnic populations about which we have limited knowledge—Swedish urban working-class women. In spite of considerable attention lately in Swedish immigration history to urban settlement, relatively little is known about this group.2
Case records of the charity and welfare agencies that offered assistance to immigrant families provide one window into the lives of working-class immigrant women, who otherwise have produced exceedingly few written accounts to document their experiences. This study examines working-class female Swedish immigrants in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in the early decades of the twentieth century through the case records of twenty-seven Swedish-American women who received assistance from the AC.3
Coping with Economic Need
Swedish immigrant working-class women emerge from these records not merely as victims of hardship, but rather as capable, intelligent people who reacted to distress in a variety of creative ways. They fashioned survival strategies that were shaped by their ethnicity, gender, and class. They departed from a society whose attitudes toward women mirrored in many ways those of Victorian America. Swedish women's roles centered around the home—not around wage-earning—and it was considered inappropriate for married women to work outside of their domestic environments. Women's ability to follow cultural norms varied by class, though, as lower-class women in increasing numbers were employed outside the home during the late nineteenth century.4
While Swedish working-class women did this in increasing numbers, their employment usually reflected financial need rather than a desire to work outside the home. Working-class women were thus employed when economic stress was great. But they typically quit their jobs as soon as they felt that augmenting their income was not absolutely necessary.5 Cultural norms in the Old Country dictated that Swedish women should work outside the home only as a temporary economic strategy. Dual roles as wives and wage-earners were considered incompatible if not mutually exclusive.
In the case records it appears that many Swedish immigrant wives held cultural beliefs that a woman's proper place was in the home. These beliefs surfaced in cases where a husband was unable or unwilling to support his family, and the caseworker suggested that the wife seek temporary employment. Although charity agencies also supported notions of female domesticity, caseworkers often felt that a family's need for an income outweighed these domestic values. These Swedish clients, however, might confront such advice with disdain. Work outside the home, these clients demurred, prevented a woman from performing adequately in her roles of wife and mother. Kristin J. would not consider regular employment because she believed that "every woman ought to have a few days at home in which to keep up the house."6 Emma F. responded angrily to an agent's suggestion that she look for work while her husband was unemployed. She said:
if she were able to work she would not need to have anyone come and tell her about it. . . she had too much sewing to do for the children, [who were] in school, and would not want to let [her infant daughter] Kristina stay with anyone.7
Even though Swedish immigrant women like Emma accepted ethnic gender ideals of domesticity and the resulting constraints upon female wage-work, economic pressures apparently could—and did—force them to compromise these ideals. In the case of Emma F. just quoted, when economic pressure mounted, her ethnic role prescriptions were ignored. Two years after her angry response to a caseworker's suggestion that she seek employment outside the home, Emma F. obtained work in order to earn money for her family's food and rent.8
It is important to note, however, that the relationship between client and caseworker was often one of negotiation. Some clients could be quite clever and manipulative in dealing with their caseworkers. It is possible that some women used the Victorian ideals popular at the time to support their desire to stay at home and receive assistance.
Women who violated cultural norms by working outside the home could face disapproval. When a caseworker spoke to Karl B. about his habits of drinking and periodic desertion, he tried to pin some of the blame for his problems on his wife. "He does not like the company she keeps as all the women she associates with have had their husbands desert . . . and . . . she nags him and works out," wrote an agent. After this meeting the caseworker approached the wife and inquired about her social and occupational behavior. She defended her actions vehemently, pointing out that her husband's lack of responsibility had forced her to take action and find employ­ment
for herself, and that she enjoyed talking about her problems with other women who understood them.9 From the viewpoint of the caseworker in this instance, the client simply could not win. She was considered deviant if she did not follow gender role expectations, but she was simultaneously unable to follow them.
In spite of criticism by those around her, the Swedish immigrant woman who worked outside the home might enjoy the increased freedom and autonomy that working for wages could facilitate. When Emma F.'s husband Johan had difficulty finding work in the Twin Cities, he decided that the family should try farming. They moved to the vicinities of a small town in northern Minnesota, where he made a claim on a homestead. But Emma and her oldest daughter Alice (then 17) were unhappy there, calling the homestead "lonesome and forlorn." Soon Emma and Alice returned to Minneapolis where Emma worked as a waitress and Alice as a clerk. When an agent visited their home to check on Alice, who had recently been ill, Emma stated that she "didn't need help from anybody" and that she "didn't like to have people come and ask her questions as she was now her own boss as she had never been before." The agent reported that Emma "would not return to her husband unless she was sure she could be her own boss." One may assume that her husband was not willing to accept her terms—when she appeared at the AC four years later, she asked for help in filing for divorce.10
Most of the women in the sample were neither as lucky in locating employment to support themselves and their families nor as assertive as Emma F. In every case examined, women faced severe economic pressures. In 85% of the cases involving married women, the husband was unable or unwilling to provide an income adequate for the family's survival. A husband's non-support might signify any combination of the following: low wages, unemployment, alcoholism, illness, desertion, or death. In the remaining 15% of the cases the economic problems were related to the woman—who was either suffering from mental illness or was sick or dying and therefore unable to care for herself or her children.
When a husband was not willing to support his family, it was difficult for a wife to force him to do so. Legal action was a possibility, but many women did not consider it a viable alternative. Emma B.'s experience—not to be confused with Emma F. above—helps to explain why. Emma's husband Karl was a heavy drinker and rarely provided adequate support for his family. When Emma came to the AC for help, the family had already been evicted from two residences for nonpayment of rent. Emma told the agent that she had once attempted to collect her husband's wages directly from his employer, but her husband became so angry that she was afraid to do this a second time. When the agent suggested that she take legal action and report Karl to the authorities for non-support, she was reluctant to do so because she feared that he would only become more angry and violent upon his release. Besides, she had said, the authorities would not do much more than give her husband a short-term punishment. And punishment did not alleviate the family's economic need. When Karl eventually was arrested and sent to the county workhouse, Emma still had to find a way to support her family.11
Emma B.'s attempt to collect her husband's wages from his employer was not unusual. Her action illustrates a common role for many Swedish immigrant working-class women as family financial managers. Despite the fact that the cultural norms accorded the husband the role of primary wage-earner, a "good" husband was one who let his wife manage his earnings.12 For example, Alma M. was asked by an agent about her recently deceased husband. The agent noted that "she praised him very highly, and said that he had always been a good man and had always turned over his whole paycheck."13 Sista B. described her husband to an agent by stating that "he was a good husband and always turned his entire check over ... [to me]."14 Some caseworkers also expected Swedish immigrant women to fulfill the role of financial manager, noting when a woman failed to perform this role adequately: Krishna A. was described as a "poor manager" who "spends all of her husband's money foolishly."15
As family financial manager, the Swedish immigrant wife was constantly aware of financial problems and usually worked hard to resolve them. This often meant devising a way to increase the family income. As a first step, Swedish immigrant women might turn to relatives. The types of assistance that kin could provide varied considerably, but the cases examined here revealed many instances of money given or lent, food and clothing provided, or relatives caring for children while parents were ill or unemployed. When Adrena S. died leaving five children in the home, a grown daughter took in one of the children.16 When it was determined that Rosie F. should be placed in a mental hospital, her niece's family cared for her rather than allowing her to be institutionalized.17 In 1918, Selma B. was listed as "almost entirely dependent on relatives" for food and rent money.18
Friends and neighbors—the ethnic neighborhood—also assisted Swedish immigrant families, but these activities are harder to trace in the case records because no detailed listing was made for them in the sources as was done for kin. In several cases, however, neighbors reported to the AC that they and others had been assisting a family but could do so no longer because the family's need was too great. The Nils N. family borrowed over $400 from friends and neighbors before appearing at the agency for help." The housing patterns of
A d a p t e d from "Map of M i n n e a p o l i s , " H u d s o n P u b l i s h i n g C o . , 1 9 1 0.
( C o u r t e s y of Dallas R. L i n d g r e n , M i n n e s o t a H i s t o r i c a l S o c i e t y .)
welfare families also suggest the importance of neighborhoods in providing a network of support. Economic uncertainty and evictions forced welfare families to move frequently, but these moves tended to take place within a small section of the city. Minneapolis's Ward 9 was an area containing a large proportion of Swedes; the ward included over 2,400 first-generation Swedes in 1930.20 The moving pattern of one of the cases in the study is illustrated in Figure 1. Between 1911 and 1917, this family moved five times but always remained inside a heavily Swedish neighborhood .21 To move out of the ethnic enclave would entail locating and establishing new networks of help.
Ethnic and religious organizations represented another coping strategy available to Swedish immigrant women in times of economic need. In 77% of the cases, immigrant families had or were receiving assistance from a religious or ethnic organization. The relief provided usually included groceries, small cash gifts, and new or used clothing. Figure 2 lists the agencies and organizations that provided relief in the cases examined.
ORGANIZATIONS AND AGENCIES PROVIDING ASSISTANCE
Ethnic/Religious
Augustana church
Augustana Mission
Bethlehem Methodist Church
Concordia Society
Elim Baptist Church
Emmanuel Church
Lutheran Church
Methodist Church
Riverside Chapel
Swedenborgian Church
Swedish Church
Swedish Hospital
Swedish Lutheran Church
Swedish Mission Friends Church
Westminster Church
Public
Associated Charities Board of Public Welfare
Dept. of Public Relief Humane Society Legal Aid
Public Employment Bureau Visiting Housekeeper Visiting Nurse
Other Private
Citizen's Alliance Hennepin Mission Home Pillsbury House Salvation Army Severson Clinic Steven's Avenue Home Sunshine Society Trade and Labor Assembly Union Relief Unity House Washburn House Wells Memorial
Figure 2. 11 It is evident from the case records that needy families often relied on public and private charitable agencies for relief. For many women in need, however, this assistance was not without cost. Clients frequently had to endure the moral judgments and behavioral demands of the various agencies in order to receive any help. The story of Johanna S. and Alfred O. is a case in point. Johanna and Alfred lived together for a number of years and had a child out of wedlock. In 1911 Johanna became dissatisfied with her living arrangements because Alfred began to drink heavily and date other women. After leaving Alfred she came to the AC, desiring assistance in removing her possessions from Alfred's home and child care, which would enable her to work outside the home in order to support herself and the child. Although a police escort was provided to help Johanna retrieve her belongings, the AC was reluctant to provide any additional help. The caseworker wanted to take Johanna's child away from her so that Johanna's "loose morals" could be reformed. The agency sought to instruct her in "proper" behav­ior.
22 Disapprobation and humiliation were the price this woman paid to obtain some assistance.
Although the strategies of seeking assistance from relatives, friends, churches, or professional agencies were frequently used, they were never more than temporary solutions to economic distress. None of these sources of relief were intended to provide long-term assistance. They were created to provide temporary assistance until other means of support could be devised. What were these other means?
Some women turned to taking in boarders as a long-term strategy.23 For immigrants whose cultural norms discouraged work outside the home for married women, this proved to be an attractive way to earn money. It provided extra income for the family while allowing the wife and mother to remain in the home. The women were already accustomed to cooking and cleaning for the members of their families, so the additional laundry or meals required by a roomer or boarder did not necessitate learning any new job skills. This strategy demanded, however, an increase in the amount of energy and time needed to accomplish these tasks, and it also frequently incurred those emotional and interpersonal difficulties that commonly arise when members are added to a household.24
For families with children living in small tenement apartments, taking in boarders was not feasible. In these cases women might be forced to seek employment outside the home. The case records indicate that working for wages was not viewed positively as a long-term economic strategy. Like their sisters in the Old Country, most of these Swedish women who worked outside their homes appeared to do so only when it was absolutely necessary. For example, a woman might hold a job only during the time her husband was unemployed or away from home. Anna C. did laundry in homes every day while her husband had a painting job in Winona, Minneso­ta.
25 Hilda E. worked in a hand laundry while her husband was employed on the west coast.26
The fact that many women worked only when their husbands were absent may be tied not only to the economic need felt with the wage-earner absent but also to disapproval of working wives. From a practical standpoint, wages for working women were so low that it was hard to support a family where the woman was the primary wage-earner. Job opportunities were usually limited to unskilled labor. Some women lacked English language skills, which further limited employment opportunities. Finally, employers often avoided hiring married women, viewing them as unreliable because the demands of their families and homes might interfere with work schedules. In the case of Nils N., whose wife was the primary wage-earner while he stayed home to take care of the household and children, her wages were inadequate to support the family and they frequently applied to the AC for assistance. In this instance, the caseworker spent time trying to convince the couple to reverse their roles.27
Lack of adequate child care also made working outside the home difficult. In 1909 the AC listed only three day nurseries in Minneapo­lis.
28 One solution to this problem was to have an older child stay home from school to take care of the younger siblings. Annie C. made her 14-year-old daughter stay home with her younger siblings (ages 3,4, and 7) while she herself held a job and her husband looked for employment. This strategy worked for Annie for a while, but she was eventually confronted by a truant officer who demanded that her daughter attend school.29
Sick children created even more problems for the working mother. Even if adequate child care had been arranged so that the mother could hold a job, a sick child had to remain at home and could rarely be left alone. This meant that a mother might have to quit her job to care for an ailing child. Paid vacations and sick leave were rare in the early twentieth century, and sick-child leave was non-existent. Employers seldom retained the positions of women who happened to be absent for more than a few days. Selma W., who had worked as a clerk for the four years since her husband died, had to quit her job to take care of her 16-year-old daughter Ruth when she became ill.30
Although young or sick children might handicap a mother seeking to ease financial difficulties through wage-work, older children could be a boon to a family's economy by providing additional income through full or part-time employment before leaving the home. Families in this study used this economic strategy, despite some uneasiness about the appropriateness of relying on the wages of children for their support. Marguerite L. complained to a caseworker that her family, which had been living solely on one son's wages, needed aid. She felt it was wrong for her son to be required to support the entire family. She thought that he should use some of his money to buy new shoes and clothing for himself, not just for food and rent.31 One of the women for whom Anna J. laundered told an agent that "Mrs. J. would at times go hungry so that [her son] Valdemar could take a girlfriend to a movie now and then."32 The family had been living on Valdemar's and his mother's earnings since Mr. J. had become too old to work.
Swedish immigrant working-class women's case records reveal the variety of strategies these women used to meet their families' economic needs. To summarize, options ranged from legal action, child labor, taking in boarders, and wage work to seeking assistance from relatives, friends, and charitable organizations. These women carefully chose their economic strategies and weighed the value and costs of different options before making decisions. A pattern and logic to their choices emerges if one examines the case records in aggregate terms and with respect to the life course stage of a woman and her family during a period of need. Economic distress affected Swedish immigrant women and their families differently depending on the age and circumstances of a given family.
Survival Strategies and the Family Life Course
This study suggests that economic problems were most likely to emerge at two points in the Swedish immigrant working-class woman's life: first when she had a number of young children—usu­ally
when she was in her thirties—and then much later in life when husband and wife were left to support themselves just when their earning power was beginning to decrease. The age structure of families at the time of their first contacts with the AC is revealing. In 89% of the cases (twenty-four of them), the women were age 30 or older when they first contacted an agent (see Figure 3). In the cases where children were present (89% of the total), 74% had children under the age of 13 when their cases began. And 92% of the cases with children had one or more child over age 11 when assistance from the agency was terminated.
AGE AT FIRST CONTACT WITH AC/FWA
AGE NUMBER
20-24 25-29 30-34 35-39 40-44 45-49 50-54 55-59 60-64
No age listed
Figure 3.
These statistics suggest that young children in a household made economic survival particularly difficult. In addition to requiring extra food and clothing—straining the family budget—they also made it more difficult for a mother to provide additional income for the family at a time when it was most needed. The mother usually had to remain in the home to care for the children, and for the poorest classes there was little extra living space available to take in boarders. A husband's inability to contribute income to the family economy could make financial problems especially severe. At this point they were most likely to resort to welfare agencies for assistance. When children reached an age at which they could find employment, they could supplement the family income. Families with working-age children who were living at home were less likely to need continued agency support. The presence of older children might also make it easier for a mother to hold a job, since they could sometimes provide child care for their younger siblings.33
As children moved out of the home, families could more easily take in boarders. Alma M., who first sought aid from the AC in 1921, did not take in boarders until 1927 when two of her children had married and only one remained in the home.34 But boarders often became more burdensome as women grew older and became less capable of strenuous physical labor such as lifting heavy laundry tubs. Forty-five-year old Anna M.'s husband died in 1905, leaving her with two children (ages 12 and 14). She supported her family by taking in eight boarders and collected a total of $41 per month. But by 1921, when she was 61, she was physically unable to care for so many boarders and asked the AC to help her find work in a restaurant or mending clothes.35
When a woman reached her fifties or sixties, another period of economic difficulty might ensue. Children were usually married and living outside the home by this time, while parents' abilities to earn a living decreased with age. Grown children might be able to help support their parents, but more often than not these children had families of their own, which they were struggling to support.36
While the primary purpose of this study has been to examine the lives of Swedish immigrant working-class women in Minneapolis, the findings also raise some questions and suggest the need for further research using welfare case records. How representative were Swedish immigrant women on relief of Swedish working-class women as a whole? At first glance the relief-seeking group might seem highly unrepresentative because the population studied included only persons who sought relief from agencies cooperating with the Associated Charities. Yet many working-class families were forced to seek aid from economic distress. Historian Michael Katz in his study of poverty in American history has noted: ".., dependence was a major problem in nineteenth- and twentieth-century America . . . periodic dependence was a predictable, structural feature of working-class life."37 For many Swedish working-class families, the line between self-sufficiency and dependence or relief-seeking was very fine. It did not take much to push a family into dependence on welfare institutions. The actions of the Swedish-American ethnic community support this idea as well. Swedish Americans established charitable institutions such as orphanages, "homes of mercy," women's lodging homes, sanitariums, and homes for the aged in most areas with significant Swedish-American populations. These
institutions would not have been created had there been no need for them.38
From the perspective of the historian of immigration, one must ask: What difference did ethnicity make? Did Swedish working-class immigrant women behave differently in fashioning survival strategies than German, Irish, or Italian women? Or do ethnic differences decrease as one moves downward on the socioeconomic scale? While some studies utilizing welfare case records suggest similarities between persons in need regardless of gender or ethnicity, only further investigations and comparisons of clients from different ethnic groups will furnish answers to these questions.39
Case records also reveal many of the social and cultural values of caregivers and charitable agencies. The agency examined here had emerged from the dominant native-born culture. Many ethnic groups established their own charitable agencies and have case records similar to those studied here. How do the records of the Scandina­vian-
based Minneapolis Lutheran Social Service or the Jewish Family and Children's Service compare with those of the AC?
Statistical analysis of the information included on case record face sheets could also reveal important information about working-class life. From a labor historian's perspective, for instance, lists of prior employers and wages provide details about the occupational choices and the labor market as well as wage levels. The role of the labor union in assisting welfare families can also be documented. Even in the small number of cases examined in this study, one husband was active in a union, which the AC contacted and asked to assist these people.40 Welfare case records are also an important way to investi­gate
married women's labor force participation, which has typically been difficult to document because of their periodic participation and the unskilled nature of their work. Researchers should be encour­aged
to utilize these potentially rich documents.
The image of Swedish immigrant working-class women emerging from the case records is not one of passive victims of society. These women worked hard to maintain their dignity, their homes, and their families. When there was not enough money to put food on their tables or shoes on their children's feet, when husbands were absent or unable to find employment, women constructed a variety of strategies to meet the needs of their families. Women made informed choices from a range of potential survival strategies within a framework shaped by the interplay of class, ethnicity, gender, and age. That most of these women "did not whimper or complain," despite their struggles with marginality, is testimony to their courage, intelligence, strength, and determination.
NOTES
'Case 4659 on Reel 133 of Associated Charities/Family Welfare Association Case Records, Social Welfare History Archives, Minneapolis, Minnesota [all case number references below are records located in this collection].
2On Swedes in urban areas, see Ulf Beijbom, The Swedes in Chicago: A Demographic and Social Study of the 1846-1880 Immigration (Uppsala, 1971); Dag Blanck and Harald Runblom, eds., Swedish Life in American Cities (Uppsala, 1991); Byron J. Nordstrom, "The Sixth Ward: A Minneapolis Swede Town in 1905" and Matti Kaups, "Swedish Immigrants in Duluth, 1856-1870" in Nils Hasselmo, ed., Perspectives on Swedish Immigration (Chicago and Duluth, 1978), 151-65,166-98; Odd S. Lovoll, ed., Scandina­vians
and Other Immigrants in Urban America: The Proceedings of a Research Conference, October 26-27,1984 (Northfield, Minnesota, 1985); Anita R. Olson, "Swedish Chicago: The Extension and Transformation of an Urban Immigrant Community, 1880-1920," Ph.D. dissertation (Northwestern University, June 1990); Sune Åkerman, "Stability and Change in the Migration of a Medium-Sized City: The Case of Worcester, Massachu­setts"
in Dirk Hoerder, ed., American Labor and Immigration History, 1877-1920s (Urbana, 1983); see also Philip J. Anderson and Dag Blanck, eds., Swedish-American Life in Chicago (Urbana, 1992) as well as publications emerging out of the Uppsala University project on "Swedes and other ethnic groups in urban America."
On Swedes in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, see Nordstrom, "The Sixth Ward;" as well as Byron J. Nordstrom, "Ethnicity and Community in the Sixth Ward of Minneapolis in 1910," in Lovoll, ed., Scandinavians and Other Immigrants in Urban America, 33-53. Other works dealing with Swedes in Minneapolis include Alfred Söderstrom, Minneapolis Minnen. Kulturhistorisk Axplockning från Qvarnstaden vid Mississippi (Minneapolis, 1899); Byron J. Nordstrom, ed., The Swedes in Minnesota (Minneapolis, 1976); Works Projects Administration, Writers Program, The Bohemian Flats (Saint Paul, 1986 [orig. pub. 1941]); Richard Wolniewicz, 'Northeast Minneapolis: Location and Movement in an Ethnic Community," Ph. D. dissertation (University of Minnesota, 1979); Lisa Knazan, "The Maple Hill Community, 1919-1940," summa paper (University of Minnesota, 1973), copy in Minnesota Historical Society; John G. Rice, "The Swedes," in J. D. Holmquist, ed., They Chose Minnesota: A Survey of the State's Ethnic Groups (Saint Paul, 1981), 248-76.
For important research on urban working-class Swedish women, see Byron J. Nordstrom, "Evelina Månsson and the Memoir of an Urban Labor Migrant," Swedish Pioneer Historical Quarterly, 31 (1980): 182-95, and Inga Holmberg, 'Taboos and Morals or Economy and Family Status?: Occupational Choice Among Immigrant Women in the U.S.," Blanck and Runblom, 25-43.
'Although case records have recently been used by scholars of women and social welfare, they have yet to be utilized by ethnic historians. See Linda Gordon, Heroes of Their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence, Boston 1880-1960 (New York, 1988); Michael B. Katz, Poverty and Policy in American History (New York, 1983); and Beverly Stadum, Poor Women and Their Families: Hard Working Charity Cases, 1900-1930 (New York, 1992).
'Murray Gendell, Swedish Working Wives (Totowa, New Jersey, 1963), 45-60. On
Swedish women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, see also Gunnar
Qvist, "Policy Towards Women and the Women's Struggle in Sweden," Scandinavian
Journal of History, 5 (1980): 51-74; Gunnar Qvist, Konsten att blifva en god flicka.
Kvinnohistoriska uppsatser (Stockholm, 1978) and Kerstin Moberg, Från tjänstehjon till
hembiträde. En kvinnlig låglönegrupp i den fackliga kampen 1903-1946 (Uppsala, 1978).
5Gendell, 58.
6Case 3926 on Reel 129.
7Case 4655 on Reel 133.
"Ibid.
'Case 4372 on Reel 131. ,0Case 4655 on Reel 133. "Case 4372 on Reel 131.
1JOn immigrant women as financial managers, see John Bodnar, The Transplanted: A
History of Immigrants in Urban America (Bloomington, 1985), 82.
"Case 3981 on Reel 129.
"Case 4197 on Reel 130.
"Case 4495 on Reel 131.
léCase 4513 on Reel 132.
,7Case 4542 on Reel 132.
,8Case 4659 on Reel 133.
"Case 4138 on Reel 129.
^Calvin F. Schmid, Social Saga of Two Cities (Minneapolis, 1937), Chart 76.
aCase 4495 on Reel 131. The same phenomena have been noted among London's poor.
See Gareth Stedman Jones, Outcast London (Oxford, 1971), 81-88.
22Case 4187 on Reel 130.
23John Modell and Tamara K. Hareven, "Urbanization and the Malleable Household: An Examination of Boarding and Lodging in American Families," Journal of Marriage and the Family, (1973): 472.
24I found boarding used in the following case records: Case 3926 on Reel 129, Case 3981
on Reel 129, Case 4372 on Reel 131, Case 4493 on Reel 131, and Case 4750 on Reel 133.
aCase 4463 on Reel 131.
26Case 4467 on Reel 131.
''Case 4138 on Reel 129.
^Associated Charities, 1909, p. 45.
29Case 4469 on Reel 131.
'"Case 4659 on Reel 133.
31Case 4024 on Reel 129.
32Case 4551 on Reel 132.
"My findings on boarders differ from several other studies that indicate use of the boarder strategy in households with younger children. See James R. Barrett, "Work and Community in the Jungle: Chicago's Packing House Workers, 1894-1922," Ph.D. dissertation (University of Pittsburgh, 1981), 173; Donna Gabaccia, "Sicilians in Space: Environmental Change and Family Geography," journal of Social History, (1982): 53-66; and Oliver Zunz, The Changing Face of Inequality: Urbanization, Industrial Development, and Immigrants in Detroit, 1880-1920 (Chicago, 1982), 72-73. This difference may be due to the fact that the families in this study were at the very bottom of the economic ladder and their housing was too dismal to accommodate boarders. In addition, the AC discouraged this activity, viewing it as a negative influence on family life. "Case 3981 on Reel 129.
^See Case 4024 on Reel 129, Case 4542 on Reel 132, Case 4551 on Reel 132, and Case 4430 on Reel 131. 37Katz, 9.
''See, e.g., Rev. Erik Sjostrand, "Civic and Charitable Activities Among the Swedish-Americans," in The Swedish Element in America, Vol. 2, Axel W. Hulten, assoc. ed. (Chicago, 1934), 252-312. The focus of this documentation has been on factors such as organization, financing and management, rather than on the clients, and this material reveals little about the actual circumstances of working-class Swedish immigrant life. 3,On Jewish welfare recipients, see Richard M. Chapman, "To Do These Mitzvahs: Jewish Philanthropy and Social Service in Minneapolis, 1900-1950," Ph.D. Dissertation (University of Minnesota, 1993). On Associated Charities welfare recipients from a variety of ethnic and racial groups, see Beverly Stadum.
"Case 4024 on Reel 129—"case referred to Trade and Labor Assembly because John was a union man."
APPENDIX INFORMATION ON SOURCE MATERIAL Welfare Case Records
Because welfare case records represent a relatively new way in which to study social history, and particularly immigration history, it is useful to discuss how and why these records were created. The Associated Charities of Minneapolis was formed in 1884 as part of a nationwide charity organization movement. The AC later changed its name to the Family Welfare Association. The organization was designed to create "order and coordination" among the many relief agencies providing assistance to the needy in Minneapolis. These included private religious and secular agencies as well as public ones. By providing relief in a systematic and coordinated manner, charity-givers hoped that duplication of services and "cheating" by the poor would be avoided. These goals were to be met through the investiga­tion
of clients by volunteers called "friendly visitors."
Such visitors interviewed the candidates for relief and made recommendations regarding the "worthiness" of the applicant and the type of relief they thought would be most beneficial to the recipient. The Minneapolis AC eventually developed a staff of professional caseworkers who visited clients and created detailed case files for each family or individual who came—or was reported—to the AC as "in need." This transition from friendly visitors to professional caseworkers occurred in the first decade of the twentieth century. By 1907 a professional staff trained in social casework theory and methods was fully in place.1
The Associated Charities emphasized meticulous and elaborate investigation of all who applied for assistance. In a history written on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the agency in 1909 a worker wrote "it was realized that to do good, it was not enough to hand out money and goods to him who asked but that the 'why' of asking must be known."2 A 1927 publication of the Family Welfare Associa­tion
(FWA—this change of name having occurred in 1922) listed the type of information an agent's investigation might include: "Social case work . . . looks into employment records, domestic relations, health conditions, creditors' schedules, children's school records, church connections, recreational opportunities, and so on."3
Each case record file began with a number of face sheets (see figures 4 and 5), listing the following data: names of applicants for aid and family members, dates of birth and/or death, present and previous addresses (often including the number of rooms rented or owned and the amount of rent paid or dollar value of the residence), employment experience of all family members, wages, birthplaces of family members and grandparents, and dates of immigration to the United States. Other pages listed information such as length of time as a resident of Minneapolis, relatives living in the United States, and agencies or individuals who had already assisted the client at the time the AC began supervision of the case.
Following these fact sheets were detailed descriptions of each contact made by the AC agents with the families and individuals listed on the face sheets (see Figure 6). The descriptions written by caseworkers are rich in detail about certain aspects of the ways of life of the working class. They also contain, however, varying degrees of bias. Caseworkers were usually white and native-born. Translators were not always available to them, so their communication with their clients could be difficult at times. A caseworker might mistake lack of language skills for stupidity. For example, the person reporting on Swedish immigrant woman Sista B. said that she spoke "very little English" and then stated a concern that she might be "sub-normal."4 Caseworkers often judged their clients on a basis of middle-class standards of appearance and behavior. It is reasonable to assume, moreover, that women seeking assistance from the AC were not always completely open and honest with caseworkers who asked intimate details about their families. Yet in spite of the potential for caseworker bias or other errors, these records represent an important historical source for our understanding of working-class immigrant life. As Linda Gordon has pointed out in her work using case records: "Their status as historical documents does not make them infallible; their truth must be gathered from among the varied and often conflicting stories they contain, and from the complex relation­ships
they express . . ."5
The Study Sample
The record collection of the AC/FWA is located at the Social Welfare History Archives at the University of Minnesota—Minneapo­lis,
and includes nearly four hundred reels of microfilmed case records. They have been filmed more or less in chronological order, and for this analysis I chose cases beginning around 1910. By that year the organization had a professional staff and the recording methods of the different caseworkers were more likely to be consistent with one another than in earlier years.
I examined five reels of microfilm, which contained a total of 363 relief cases. Twenty-seven of them met the ethnic and gender criteria I had set for the study; cases had to involve first-generation Swedish immigrant women, single or married.
The case length—measured by first to last agency contact—ranged from one to twenty-two years, with an average duration of 9.7 years. In the course of the agents' visits, however, clients frequently discussed a variety of past experiences, often ranging as far back as their childhoods in Sweden.6 A client's record that showed contact beginning with the AC/FWA in 1911 could contain information about a woman's immigration and occupational strategies in the 1890s.7 The cases I examined included information spanning the decades from 1880 to 1930, with the most details for the 1910s and 1920s.
NOTES
'On the Minneapolis Associated Charities, see David Klaassen, "One Hundred Years of Service to Families and Children," unpublished manuscript, Social Welfare History Archives, University of Minnesota. On the national organization (Charity Organization Societies—COS) movement, see Frank Dekker Watson, The Charity Organization Movement in the United States: A Study in American Philanthropy (New York, 1922). associated Charities, A Quarter Century of Work Among the Poor, 1884-1909 (Minneapo­lis,
1909), 16.
'Family Welfare Association, The Family Welfare Association in Action, 1917-1926 (Minneapolis, 1927), 18. 4Case 4197 on Reel 130. 5Gordon, 19.
6See, e.g., Case 4024 on Reel 129 ("Mr. and Mrs. L. were both born in the southern part of Sweden. They had known each other since they were youngsters. They had both gone to school until 15 years as had been required by Swedish law. They had both been confirmed. They said that one couldn't amount to anything in Sweden unless they had gone to school and been confirmed.").
7See, e.g., Case 4372 on Reel 131 ("Wife said that she had known husband in the old country ... he had come to this country early in 1892 and she had come at midsummer at his request. She had worked at housework for five years and he had worked in different factories the same length of time before they were married."). F i g u r e 4.
24
F i g u r e 5.
F i g u r e 6.